Risky translations for necessary systematisations

Abstract

The centenary year of Jurij M. Lotman’s birth offers the opportunity for a review of the unfoldings of the semiotics of culture. This article is centered on the success of this approach, which has become global ; on the risks that might entail an understimation of its structural theoretical roots ; and on the possible dialogues within the semiotic field. The discussion starts from the following key-points : the need for a communicative writing which does not sacrifice references to the method and the analytical practice, the deep correlation between life and texts, the relation among texts as “models of the world” and  discursivity as the place of reflexive constitution of the social, the attention to the dynamics of transformation of meaning either in programmed gradual modes or in unpredictabble haphazard ways, both at historical and daily-interaction levels.